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Alden Gonzalez
TORONTO — When the final out of Game 7 of the World Series was recorded late Saturday night, and the Los Angeles Dodgers cemented themselves as champions for a second straight year, Clayton Kershaw was too preoccupied to notice.
It was the bottom half of the 11th inning, and Kershaw was spending the final moments of a Hall of Fame career preparing to come out of the bullpen in a pinch. When he turned to watch Alejandro Kirk hit a broken-bat grounder that started a double play, Kershaw was certain there were two outs and the score was suddenly tied, not that his Dodgers had just pulled off an improbable, championship-clinching 5-4 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays.
In that moment, Dodgers bullpen coach Josh Bard turned to Kershaw in elation: “We just won the World Series!” he announced.
“Are you sure?” Kershaw asked.
Indeed, he was.
Down a run with two outs remaining in their quest to become the first team in a quarter century to repeat, the Dodgers got a game-tying home run from Miguel Rojas in the ninth then a game-winning home run from Will Smith in the 11th. In between were two improbable defensive plays, one by Rojas, who made an off-balance throw home, and the other by Andy Pages, who chased a deep drive in the left-center-field gap.
And all throughout, there were four starting pitchers — Shohei Ohtani then Tyler Glasnow then Blake Snell then Yoshinobu Yamamoto — guiding the way. It was fitting.
“That’s how this organization built this team for us,” Rojas said. “We wanted them to take big roles in this moment.”
Their roles could not have been bigger. Ohtani took the ball on three days’ rest for the first time in his career and pitched into the third, exiting after allowing a three-run homer to Bo Bichette that ignited a sold-out Rogers Centre crowd. Glasnow took the ball one day after coming out of the bullpen to record the final three outs in Game 6 and went on to record seven outs in Game 7. Snell was on two days’ rest and added four additional outs.
Yamamoto, meanwhile, was on zero days’ rest.
The Dodgers’ Japanese right-hander pitched six innings of one-run ball in Game 6, on the heels of a complete game in Game 2. But he recorded the last two outs in the ninth, mowed through the Blue Jays’ lineup in the 10th and staved off another furious rally in the 11th. In the end, he became an easy choice for the World Series MVP.
“I don’t think you’ll ever see somebody do what Yama did tonight,” said Kershaw, who will now settle into retirement. “That was probably the most gutsy, ballsy thing any guy has ever done.”
Late Friday night, after his team had saved its season in improbable fashion, Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman received a text message informing him Yamamoto was getting treatment and intended to make himself available for Game 7. Friedman appreciated the sentiment but mostly blew it off. Then Saturday came, and the game demanded Yamamoto’s presence, and so the Dodgers figured they’d see what his stuff looked like and pull him if any red flags emerged. They never did.
“His stuff was as good tonight as it was last night, which is absolutely mind-blowing,” Friedman said.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts agreed.
“It’s unheard of,” Roberts said, “and I think that there’s a mind component, there’s a delivery, which is a flawless delivery, and there’s just an unwavering will. I just haven’t seen it. I really haven’t.”
The Dodgers once wore the weight of a team whose success was only reserved for the regular season, during which they continually dominated their opponents before coming up short in October. That is no longer the case. The Dodgers, division champions after 12 of the past 13 seasons, have now claimed three titles in six years and stand as the first team since the 2000 New York Yankees to win back-to-back championships.
The road there was more arduous than expected.
The Dodgers once again suffered a litany of injuries throughout their starting rotation and taxed a bullpen that later struggled to consistently get outs. Around midseason, their star-studded offense slumped. In the end, a team many expected to challenge the regular-season wins record of 116 finished with just 93, barely holding off the San Diego Padres in the National League West. But the Dodgers’ rotation rounded back into form in September, dominating opposing hitters with a 2.07 ERA.
That continued in October. The Dodgers breezed past the Cincinnati Reds, outlasted the Philadelphia Phillies and swept the Milwaukee Brewers to reach the World Series for the fifth time in nine years. In that stretch, Snell, Yamamoto, Glasnow and Ohtani went 7-1 with a 1.36 ERA. The Dodgers went into the final round as heavy favorites, but they ran into a Blue Jays team that tested their starters, put a lot of pressure on their slumping offense and ultimately challenged them like no one else.
“This was not easy,” Friedman said. “The season was not easy. I feel like in a lot of ways, we performed to our 30th-percentile outcome, which can happen. There’ve been seasons where we’ve performed above it, seasons where we’ve performed below it. But for them to find ways to win baseball games at the time it matters most I think says a lot about the character of this group.”
It was evident in the World Series. The Blue Jays won Game 1 by bludgeoning the Dodgers’ middle relievers, accumulating nine runs in one sixth inning. But Yamamoto answered with a masterpiece in Game 2, twirling his second consecutive complete game, and Freddie Freeman ended an 18-inning marathon in Game 3 with another World Series walk-off homer.
When the Blue Jays cruised to a Game 4 win and rode a dominant Trey Yesavage to also take Game 5, the Dodgers were forced to win back-to-back road games in Toronto to claim another title. L.A. proved up for the challenge.
In the ninth inning of Game 6, the Blue Jays had runners on second and third with one out in a two-run game when Enrique Hernandez charged in on a sinking liner in shallow left field, made the catch and fired to second base, where Rojas fielded an extremely difficult one-hopper to complete the first game-ending, 7-4 double play in postseason history.
In Game 7, Rojas found himself in the middle of it all again.
The Dodgers constantly spoiled run-scoring opportunities, going 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position. When Rojas came to bat in the top of the ninth, his team trailed by a run with none on and one out. Then he worked the count full against Jeff Hoffman, stayed back just long enough on a slider and deposited it into the Blue Jays’ left-field bullpen. It was his first extra-base hit all postseason.
“He’s the ultimate team guy,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said of Rojas, “and for him to get that home run to tie it up, it brings tears to my eyes just thinking about it.”
The Blue Jays threatened in the bottom half, loading the bases with one out. But when Daulton Varsho hit a hard grounder to the right side, Rojas ranged back to field it then made an off-balance throw home to retire Isiah Kiner-Falefa just in time. The next batter, Ernie Clement, hit a 366-foot drive to left-center field, and all of Canada seemed to hold its breath.
Hernandez and Pages, who had just been inserted in the game for his arm strength, converged, and in the end, Hernandez went down. His face was buried in the warning track. Behind him, he thought the ball had fallen in and that the game was over.
“I was going to pull a Willie Mays, and then he tackled me, and I felt like I got dunked on, and I thought we lost,” Hernandez said of Pages. “I was just down because I thought we lost. And he came up to me and said, ‘Are you OK?’ ‘F— that, do you have the ball!’ He’s like, ‘Yeah.’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, let’s go!'”
Two innings after that, Smith smashed a hanging slider from Shane Bieber to give the Dodgers their first lead. Moments later, with runners on the corners and one out in the bottom of the 11th, Mookie Betts fielded Kirk’s grounder, stepped on second and fired to Freeman at first to trigger the celebration.
When it finally hit him, Kershaw jogged onto the field and could not stop yelling.
“Hard to put into words, honestly,” Kershaw said. “I’m just so grateful.”
